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Tuesday, 15 November 2016

The Princess Alice Disaster 1878

This article, one of the earliest on my blog, was first published almost exactly three years ago. I find it fascinating in that the incident in question not only occurred in the period I write about in my faction but because it is remarkable that such a large-scale disaster on London's river should be all but forgotten today.

I hope you like the article now even if you did not see it originally

It is strange that some disasters, such as the loss of the Titanic in 1912, live on in the popular memory
while others of comparable magnitude in terms of loss of life, such as the
sinking of the liner Empress of
Ireland after a collision in the St. Lawrence in May 1914, have been
largely forgotten. The Empress of Ireland sinking did however claim 1012 lives
as compared with 1514 in the Titanic disaster, almost exactly the same
percentage, 68%, of those on board in both cases.

This line of thinking occurred to me when I recently visited
the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich and was struck by a contemporary
model, as shown here, of the collision of the paddle steamer Princess Alice with
the collier Bywell Castlein the Galleons Reach section of Thames Estuary on September 3rd
1878. Though the accident occurred close to shore the death toll was in excess
of 650. I find it strange that such a huge disaster, which occurred practically
in London, and which claimed the lives of so many of its citizens, would be
totally absent from popular memory and that it has not figured, as far as I
know, in any novel, movie or television production (especially taking into
account the British fixation on costume dramas).

Contemporary
model of the Princess Alice disaster
in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

The Princess Alice
was a 219-foot, 171-ton, paddle steamer built as the Bute in Greenock in 1865 for ferry service on the Scottish west
coast. She came south two years later, where she was renamed for service as
an excursion steamer on the Thames estuary, under a succession of owners. At
this time excursions downriver from London were popular outings for a growing
urban population that was enjoying increased if modest prosperity.

Profile view of the Princess Alice

On September 3, 1878, a Tuesday, the Princess Alice made a routine trip from the Swan Pier, near London
Bridge, to Gravesend and Sheerness. For most passengers heading for Gravesend
the attraction was the Rosherville Pleasure Gardens there – officially
the “Kent Zoological and Botanical Gardens Institution” and in essence an early
version of a theme park – which were a favourite destination for thousands of
Londoners. The gardens had their own pier to allow docking of visiting
steamers.

The moment of collision

By 1940 hrs the Princess
Alice was on her return journey, laden with over 700 passengers
– an amazing number for such a small craft, on which there could have been
little more than standing room. She was within
sight of the North Woolwich Pier - where many passengers were to disembark -
when she sighted the collier Bywell
Castle coming downriver. At 904 tons this was a substantially larger ship
than the paddle steamer and was unladen. Ignoring by the Princess Alice’s captain of the “Port to Port” rule for passing
ships in the Thames Estuary brought the paddler directly in the path of the
collier and though the later did reverse engines, this was not done rapidly
enough, making collision inevitable.

The Princess Alice
was struck amidships by the Bywell Castle
and she split in two, sinking in under four minutes and before either of its
two boats could be launched – inadequate though these would have been for the
number of persons on board. Many passengers were trapped below, as would be attested
later when the wreckage was recovered. An added horror was the fact that the
collision occurred at the point where large volumes of sewage was discharged –
according to a contemporary account: “At
high water, twice in 24 hours, the flood gates of the outfalls are opened when
there is projected into the river two continuous columns of decomposed
fermenting sewage, hissing like soda water with baneful gases, so black that
the water is stained for miles and discharging a corrupt charnel house odour”.
It was thought that many who found themselves engulfed in this ghastly sludge
died by asphyxiation.

Recovery of bodies after the disaster

The exact death toll that resulted is not known with
exactitude since there were no detailed passenger list and many bodies may have
been washed downriver or buried in the Thames mud. The Thames River Police
estimated the death toll as 640 and only 69 persons were saved, mainly through
the efforts of the Bywell Castle’s
crew, this vessel being scarcely damaged. As the collier was not laden she was
however high out of the water, making it difficult to take survivors from the
water. The two sections of the Princess
Alice were lifted and beached in the following week and unidentified bodies
were buried in a mass grave in Woolwich Old Cemetery, where a granite cross still commemorates them. A distasteful aspect of
the aftermath was that crowds of ghoulish sighthtseers came on trains from London to
clamber over the wreckage. It appeared that “anything that could be chipped or
wrenched off was carried off as curiosities by visitors”. The Princess Alice’s engines were salvaged. The Bywell Castle had its own appointment in
Samarra and she was lost with all hands in the Bay of Biscay five years later.

Stern section of Princess Alice beached

The inevitable enquiry followed the disaster and the
findings not unsurprisingly commented on the overloading, poor seamanship and
lack of live-saving equipment on the Princess
Alice. No doubt there were many statements at the time that “lessons must
be learned”, as is always said in our own time after some dreadful incident,
but just as today little practical action seems to have accompanied
the hand-wringing. The Titanic disaster
was a still 36 years in the future and application of general insights from the
Princess Alice disaster could have
lessened the death toll significantly.

I find that the loss of the Princess Alice has an almost
unbearable poignancy about it. The victims were of all sexes and ages, and were
probably in the main of modest wealth and income – I imagine Mr.Pooter and his
wife Carrie of the Grossmiths’ “Diary of
a Nobody” as being typical. They were returning from a day of innocent
pleasure and had they survived they might well have remembered it as one of the
happiest of their lives, spent with those they loved. From this humble pleasure
they were plunged – literally – into a squalid maelstrom of filth in which
their lives and happiness were torn from them and from the family members they
left behind.

And so the final question remains – why has the Princess Alice disaster, on London’s
doorstep and with its massive loss of life, faded from popular memory?

About Me

My "Dawlish Chronicles" are set in the late 19th Century and reflect my deep interest in the politics, attitudes and technology of the period. The fifth novel in the series, “Britannia’s Amazon” is now available in both paperback and Kindle formats. It follows the four earlier Dawlish Chronicles, "Britannia's Wolf", "Britannia's Reach”, "Britannia's Shark" and "Britannia's Spartan". Click on the book covers below to learn more or to purchase.
I’ve had an adventurous career in the international energy industry and am proud of having worked in every continent except Antarctica. History is a driving passion in my life and I have travelled widely to visit sites of historical significance, many insights gained in this way being reflected in my writing. I welcome contact on Facebook and via this Blog. My website is www.dawlishchronicles.com and its “Conflict” section has a large number of articles on topics from the mid-18th Century to the early 20th Century.